48 Hours - Troubled Waters

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Don North was on an adventure, sailing the Caribbean waters. It’s the life he had dreamt of, but his dream would be violently cut short. His disappearance and presumed death led authorities to the discovery of a potential serial killer. “48 Hours" Correspondent Peter Van Sant reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 8/11/2012. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That's the wind dancer. That's my uncle's boat. You can see on the bow, that used to say wind dancer. The boat is just trashed. Something really bad happened there. I'm Ezra North and Don North is my uncle. Don decided that he was going to go do what everyone dreams to do. He sailed the entire Caribbean and found absolute paradise.

It is breathtaking. We understand why Don loved it so much there. My uncle lived on this boat for 22 years. This was his life. Don just wanted to live his life in nature. He was a beautiful person. Don knew that bad things did happen, that there were pirates. He did have a gun.

He bought a taser just in case something did happen. In mid-January, we started asking each other around the family, have you heard from Don? And all of us said no. We sent an email to him. I said, Don, hey, what's up, buddy? People are looking for you. Where are you?

But, you know, Don didn't write back. It was as if he had sailed into a black hole. I remember just thinking, I don't think this looks very good. Time was of the essence. We knew there was one person who could make things happen, and that was Don Winner. I can't walk away from something like this. If I can get involved in help, I'm gun.

There's a lot of moving pieces in this thing. Different physical locations. People using aliases. There's all kinds of opportunities for bad things to happen. Oh my God. I gave him this hat. This isn't good. This was Don's worst nightmare.

Our friend Don was gone was missing. something terribly evil penetrated this utopia. Dark side of paradise, tonight's 48 hours mystery. My uncle was an absolute free spirit. Love people, loved animals, loved plants. He was just a lover of life. When Don North and his sailboat, the Wind Dancer, disappeared in the waters off Panama in January 2011,

his nephew Ezra was sick with worry. It's hard to work. It's hard to eat. It's hard to sleep. You're thousands of miles away from someone you love, and you've got a million scenarios playing out. Ezra, an engineer for an oil company, was determined to unravel the mystery of what had become of his uncle. Friends recommended the one American in Panama who might be able to find Don North.

All they said to me was, call Don Winner. This man can help you. Don Winter is a former intelligence officer with the U.S. Air Force and an investigative journalist who runs a website for expats. He's also a CBS News consultant. When I get involved in something like this, I drop all the other stuff and I go focus on the most important thing. What is it about you and who you are?

that makes you want to get involved. Why not? Wouldn't you? If you knew that there was a family member that was asking for help, wouldn't you drop what you were doing to go help that guy? I mean, it's just the right thing to do.

Winner told Ezra that he needed to file a missing person's report. This should do it. I love you. Keep in touch, okay? Ezra abruptly said goodbye to his wife in Houston, Texas, and headed for Panama.

What was it like for you to a, arrived here in Panama City that first time. Overwhelming. Ezra and Winner hit the ground running. In the expedient of Don North, searching for any information about Don North. For Ezra, being in the Caribbean, brought back memories of happier times with his Uncle Don.

My uncle was one of my best friends. He taught me how to scuba dive. He taught me how to hunt. It's everything that you want from an uncle, you know. Look at the life he lived. And what a life it was. Back in the 1990s, Don North sold his stateside gardening business, bought a boat, and set sail.

Cruising from Florida to Curacao to Columbia, kicking back and just enjoying life. Every day of his life, he did what he wanted to do, and he was a beautiful person. Don was a member of a tight-knit cruiser community. people who choose to live their lives on the water. Tell me about the cruising lifestyle. For a lot of people who live their life on a couch

with a remote in their hand, it is extraordinary what you do. I think we cruisers enjoy the freedom of being out there and being self-sufficient. Glenn Tuttle and his wife Eddie are friends of Don North. Both are retired FBI agents who've been cruising the Caribbean for years. You can literally catch down dinner under the boat, you can snorkel and spear fish and catch lobsters and it's a paradise.

He loved life. I know he loved me. We had a lot of fun together. Becky Reynolds, Don's former girlfriend, recalls the first time she set eyes on Don. And I just remember just seeing the yellow dinghy with a pink motor and I thought, oh my gosh, who's this character? And he just struck me as just a very kind of funny guy and interesting character. And we exchanged numbers. Becky and Dawn wound up living together for five years. Their sailing days were idyllic, even though Don didn't actually do much sailing. In the five years that I've known Don North, we sailed probably seven times.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. He lived on his boat. It's on the water. He liked to be on his boat, but that was his home. He liked his boat, he liked his radio, he liked his dog Kuna, he liked his plants, that was Don. Captain Jack von Olin and Dennis Morris were fellow cruisers who knew Don well. Oh, Don was classic. His claim to fame was that he never went anywhere fast, and if there was any wind, he wouldn't go.

After cruising the Caribbean for 20 years, Don North finally found his little piece of paradise. And he dropped anchor here in the beautiful San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama. Don spent most of his time on the island of Chichime, where he had a special bond with the Kuna Indians. Tell me about your uncle's relationship with the indigenous people here, the Kuna. He loved him, he respected him. He helped them garden. He helped them dig a water well. And what they think of your uncle?

They loved him. But by mid-January, 2011, no one, not the Coonnas or any of Don's friends, had seen or heard from him in weeks. December 20th, 2010. Ola, this will be the last email for a while, is my phone modem broke. In one of Don Norse last emails to his nephew, he told of a series of terrible storms ravaging the San Blas Islands.

Don did his best to help out, rescuing this man. Javier Martin, whose boat had sunk after hitting a reef. As Ezra and Winter tried to pick up Don's trail, all they had to go on was a handful of clues. we started looking for him, we were told by other cruisers that, yeah, he's sailing to Columbia, he's sailing with Captain Martine. Supposedly, Don was making the five-day trip to Cartagena to renew his visa and took along Javier Martin for company. When he was missing, at first I thought, no, Don will show up.

I just kept thinking Don will show up. One of the last times I spoke to him, he said, please don't forget me. And I said, Don. I said, Don, how could I ever forget you? But then came the worst news imaginable. A man's body was discovered floating near the San Blas Islands. With Dawn North missing for more than three weeks. And a body discovered floating off the Caribbean coast of Panama,

Don's former girlfriend, Becky Reynolds, got a horrible feeling. I called Ezra and he just said, pray as hard as you can. And that scared me that if their concern was like that, it just doesn't happen. Fortunately, the body was not Don Norse, but friends and family remained deeply worried. I felt sick. At that point, I realized that there's something very wrong going on and something bad must have happened. The bullet-ridden body was identified as a Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Bouhard, captain of a large catamaran. He'd been shot in the head, tied to an anchor, and thrown overboard.

Don's friend, Glenn Tuttle. We knew immediately it was more than a coincidence that this Frenchman had been found murdered, and our friend Don North was missing. But what was the connection? Working his sources, Winner learned that the dead Frenchman was last seen with Javier Martine, the same man Don North was with when he set sail for Columbia. It instantly became, all right, everybody focused, find Javier Martine. Winner was convinced Javier Martin would lead them to Don North.

What was going through my mind was we got business to do. Their first stop, the headquarters of the National National. National Police Force. We went to the office of the chief of operations and I sat as we're down in his office and said, here's a deal. This is what happened. This is what we think is going on. And we want to get the ball rolling on it.

And when Winter talked, the Panamanian police listened. Just months earlier, he had helped them catch accused serial killer Wild Bill Holbert, an American who preyed on retired expats. How many murder cases have you solved here in Panama? Four. And that's in a year, year and a half. Don't mess with Don Winter. Don't kill anybody. Winner convinced Panamanian authorities to form a special task force to look for Don North.

They also enlisted the FBI, which has agents stationed in Panama City. So because of all that, then the investigation went from zero to 100 percent literally in a matter of two or three hours. Ezra and Winner joined the task force as it began the hunt for Javier Martín. The biggest fear was that he might split and be gone and be on the run for years before he finally turns up. I consider him as a pirate. A pirate because he was committing crimes during his travelers. A pirate who became the focus of a manhunt overseen by this man, Gustavo Perez. National Director of Police at the time.

He leads thousands of officers like these commandos and personally oversaw the pursuit of Javier Martine. So you have people like this officer ready to move. You got a task force together in this case and off you went. Using all that manpower, the police quickly picked up Martine's trail. It led to Captain Jacks, where Don Norse's friends were to, told the lead suspect had stayed in their hostel. The hair would stand up on my arms in my back.

The more Ezra learned, the scarier Mardin became. One lady at one of the hostels had said, that guy is a psychopath. He caught a snake one time and cut the head off and ran around shaking the snake everywhere. Javier Martin? Yes, yes.

Where are we right now and where are we going? Okay, we're on the road to a town call town called Portolindo. Retracing Winner's investigation, we head to a sleepy port village near the San Blas Islands. When you come into a little village like this, I mean, what are your instincts? What are you trying to do as an investigator? Well, it was all related to tracking the movements of Javier Martin, trying to find out where he went, what he was doing.

He stayed in this room? And this is the bed that he would always stay in? What is that? Did you sense something, Robert? right away. Did you sense this man was trouble? But Trafficcant, no. A lot of d'emente. He said, I didn't think he was a drug trafficker.

I thought he was more like just crazy. He's just somebody that doesn't, that's out of control. In late January 2011, after Dawn North went missing, locals reported that Javier Martin, who had always lived hand to mouth, suddenly was living large. They said that he had bought, he went out and bought a, like a large screen plasma TV brand new. He bought a sound system. He bought a guitar. And he may have bought all that stuff using Don's ATM card. I believe that these are the

ATM machines that were used by either Javier Martine himself or people that were helping him to pull money out of the bank accounts or the victims using their ATM. He got their cards, he got their pin numbers. Taking into account the dead Frenchman, the missing money, and Javier Martin's spending spree, Winter knew in his gut it wasn't looking good for Don North. No doubt in your mind that Javier Martin is the man responsible for the disappearance of Don North. I got no doubt. I've got no doubt whatsoever. Ezra realized he had to face the hard truth. His uncle was most likely murdered by Javier This bastard killed my uncle and we need to make sure he's in jail.

Javier Martin, the man at the center of this manhunt, had spent years ferrying backpackers between Panama and Colombia. He came into contact with a lot of Americans, like Garrett Paul and Jessica Stout. We were at the start of a six-month backpacking trip and we needed to get from Colombia to Panama. And along the way, they were looking for adventure. We usually like to think outside the box and do things that are a little different and unique. He's not kidding.

Garrett and Jessica were contestants on the CBS program The Amazing Race in 2009, a year after they happened to meet Javier Martin. Came across a pamphlet for Javier Martine with a number of recommendations and called him up to see if we could meet him and see the boat. The couple signed on with Martine, and spent the next five days aboard his boat, the Twyla. Javier was a little salty in that he just, you know, you could tell he'd been spending some time out on the ocean. He was, you know, flirtatious, fun, captain, hanging out with all of us.

I even had a barbecue on one of the islands. So it was social. They liked Javier well enough to later recommend him, never suspecting he might be dangerous. It was shocking to us, but, you know, you never know what people are, capable of. I think there were two sides to Javier Martine, the side that could, you know, have the persona of a businessman and hang out with the passengers and sail them, you know, and cook for them,

and the side that obviously Don eventually found out. Becky can imagine how the two men became friends after Don rescued Javier from his sinking ship. I think that they probably broke bread, probably had a drink together. hung out. I'm speculating, but Don, you know, was a friendly guy. A friendly guy who investigators now believe had been killed at the hands of Javier Martine. Do you believe this was a calculated murder, a spur of the moment, killing? What do you think? I think it was calculated.

Determined to bring Martine to justice, Ezra went all in with Don Winter. I trusted him with my whole heart. And whenever he asked me to do something, I was going to do it. Not only had Winter convinced the Panamanian police to form a task force, he's a big believer of putting things out there. He also corralled a group of local reporters to begin spreading the word, that a man who allegedly killed Don North and Jean-Pierre Bouhard was at large. I said, hey guys, you know, huddle up.

I got one for you. Here's a deal. I said, apparently there's another serial killer on the loose, and we're looking for this man. When you tell these reporters there's a potential serial killer out there, are they interested? Oh, absolutely. That night, the story about Ezra and his missing uncle went national. My Tio was in his barco in Chichime, in San Blas. That clip aired on the primetime news that night, and it was headline news.

Winner kept digging. He got a tip that a Spaniard name Luis once had Don Norse ATM card, the same card used to drain his bank account. Tell me where we're going and why. All right, we're going to go take a look at this yellow trimaran right here. This is a boat that's owned by Luis. Luis was the guy who's associated with Javier Martín. Winner suspects Luis may have played a role

in draining Don Norse bank account. Hello. Hello. Hola. Yeah, someone said it just popped up there and went down. I saw him through the window. Winner warns us to be alert that Luis might be armed and dangerous. You saw somebody hit by them?

Yep, I saw someone said they popped up there and they looked right back down. It was on this right window here. Long hair guy, that's Luis. Luis. Luis. Luis. Okay, there is.

Hey. Hello, Luis. Yes. Yes. Good afternoon. We're with CBS News. We're doing a story about the death of Don North, the murder of Don North.

I was a friend of Don North. You were a friend of Don North, were you also a friend of Javier Martinez? Yes. I know was a friend of him. I know that guy. I know that guy. I told with this guy, but it wasn't a friend of me.

I was a friend of Don, and me and my wife. Luis admits he did have one of Don's bank cards, but insist Don gave it to him. To get some money because he was running out of dollars there, and he didn't like to move. And they gave me, Don, give me his card. Who gave you the card? Don North gave you his friend of him.

But he has no relevance with this case. I don't know. And then this can with this bullshit. That is all, man. Fadness for today. All right. Let's go, Amigo. Based on your experience as an intelligence officer,

you can read people, you can read body language. What were you seeing with all the folding up and the attitude? Scared, nervous, afraid. He wasn't putting out that I had nothing to do with it, vibe. Two days into the manhunt, Javier Martinez's whereabouts, remained a mystery. While the task force spread out over a vast area, including these scores of islands off of the coast of Panama.

He was actually hundreds of miles away, here in the tiny village of Santa Fe, not far from the border with Colombia. This Panamanian cowboy says he met Javier Martin and sold him two horses. And did he say where he was going to go? Javier's plan was to pack those horses full of supplies and head off into one of the most treacherous jungles on earth,

making his way toward Columbia, where it would be nearly impossible for any law enforcement to follow him. The question was, could anyone stop him? Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding, horrors, hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kailen Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying, true urban legends,

bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious, check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay curious. We knew that Javier Martin was a dangerous killer. We knew that he had killed two people. We knew that he was going to flee the jurisdiction of Panama. The trail to Javier Martin led to Panama's Darien Jungle.

50 miles wide and hundreds of miles long, it's a dangerous corridor. But Martin had no choice. It was the only way he could flee Panama and get to Columbia. His plan was going to be to ride via horseback through some of the most impenetrable jungle in the world and to escape into Columbia. Authorities knew Martin was equipped with guns and money, so time was of the essence. You know, you gotta wonder, is he gonna get away, you know, is he never gonna get caught? But luckily, Don Winner's strategy of plastering Javier Martin's face on national television was about to pay off. Don Winner, publica a series of photographs of the suspectosso, Javier Martin.

In a tiny town on the edge of the Darien Jungle, this hotel clerk watched that news report and was stunned. She knew that guy, and more importantly, she knew where he was, upstairs in room 27. And he wasn't using the name Javier Martin. What name did he register under? Don North. Yes, Don North.

Javier Martin had assumed the identity of the man he allegedly killed. And he didn't stop there. I was saying that if he was to go to the quarter because it was the day of San Valenti. And then he's hitting on her and trying to get her to come up to his room and saying it's Valentine's Day and I don't want to spend Valentine's Day alone.

You just learned that Don North is actually Javier Martin, an accused serial killer and he's hitting on you. She says, I got afraid. Afraid that a killer was in the hotel. She called her boss who called police. After a massive three-day manhunt involving dozens of investigators, searches in the Caribbean and the jungle, Javier Martin was arrested.

And what he had with him was damning. They found Don Norse passport. They found three weapons. They found like $13,000, cash that he had stolen from his victims. victims. The day after Martin's arrest, authorities located Don's missing boat, the wind dancer. Its name had been changed to the green twilight. That was done by Javier Martin.

And that, of course, is not the name of the boat. That boat's my uncle's home. Without the boat, he wouldn't live without the boat. That boat, once so alive when Don owned it, was now empty and adrift. What was that moment like for you when you came to the realization that he was gone? I was in shock on all the stages of grieving.

Shock comes first in disbelief. And it just to know how he died, I mean, I don't know how he died, but I can only imagine the fate of him, that makes it hard. And I just hope that it went quickly for him. He was killed on the boat. They found DNA on the boat. on the boat.

Investigators treated the wind dancer as a crime scene, sharing their findings with Ezra. They found blood in the top of the cabin, indicating that maybe a gunshot to the head. And then they found blood up the stairs and then on the deck, indicating that Javier Martin had pulled him off the boat and thrown him overboard. There was very little question that he was killed on his boat, and that's hard to think about. Well, he was just incredibly sad. You know, Don, nobody deserves to die like that. The evidence against Javier Martin continued to pile up, and was even found on Don's beloved island of Chichime.

One tent was right here? He would hear another die of year. Kuna Chief Umberto showed us where police found two tents rented by Javier Martin. Inside, Martin allegedly had stashed many of Don Norse possessions, including a gun and equipment from his boat. Electronics. It was navigational equipment. So Hercl's boat had been stripped, essentially. Yeah, apparently so.

So what was Javier Martin's plan? And more importantly, why did he allegedly kill two innocent boat owners, Jean-Pierre Bouhard and Don North? I think that he killed Don because there were things on the boat that he wanted. Remember, Martine's own boat had sunk in a storm. Authorities believe he was desperate to restart his business, ferrying backpackers between Panama and Colombia. And if you're charging them 450 bucks ahead, what you want is a big boat, they can carry more passengers. And Jean-Pierre Buhard's big boat was perfect.

Which is why police say Martin shot the Frenchman and dumped him overboard just days after killing Don North, looting his boat and stealing his money. A cold-blooded killer, basically. I mean, that sounds like he's used to killing people. It's just beyond anybody's comprehension that there are people in the world as evil as at

to do something like that. And Ezra is about to confront that evil head on. Setting foot on his uncle's boat for the first time since the murder. Oh, my God. This boat was his life. Plain and simple. So it's literally a part of him. Yeah.

It's part of his identity. This is, to see it without him on it, just, it doesn't, it didn't write. We were with Ezra as he boarded his uncle's boat for the first time since the murder. Finally made it. It doesn't look so good in there. What's the emotional connection for you to be back on this boat? I remember things, but they're all destroyed. I'm having a hard time looking at them because it's been ruined.

There's just stuff everywhere. But as he looks closer... That's Don. That's your uncle's a young man. Ezra discovers more remnants of Don Norse life. Here's my uncle at his nursery. There he is, and there's Becky. Becky Reynolds is right here.

This was his dog he had in Trinidad. His name was Jesse. Ezra then searches for a precious family heirloom. All right, well, I think he's a child I think this is the bag that my dad described. Something he assumed the killer must have stolen. Wouldn't that be cool if there was some gold in here? Oh my god.

Four solid gold Krugerans. I found him. Oh my god. Unbelievable. Your uncle's gold. The killer didn't get the gold. I just found the gold. Your Uncle Don right now has got a smile in his face.

He does. This belongs to the family. He does. I've traveled thousands of miles to get to this moment, and here they are. It's unbelievable, but it's still done bring him back. As you find the goal, the storm is kicking up, the rain is hitting. Maybe he knows. Thanks, Uncle Don. What would your uncle be saying to you right now, Isra?

He'd be proud of me. He always told me he's proud of me. He'd call me and told me he's proud of me. And I just do what I think I can do is right. That's all I can do. I don't feel like I've done anything special. Well, we've got one more search to do, don't we? Yes. And if he's got any say in it, we'll find him too.

With that in mind, Scott, what is this? What we have is an acoustic camera that allows us to see things using sound in motion. 48 hours brought sonar expert Scott Walters down to the San Blas Islands to look for the one thing that could lead us to Don's body. We're looking for an anchor. If we're lucky enough to go over one,

will this device detect it? Absolutely. This is the best thing that we could have for a search of this kind. Authorities believe Don's done The authorities believe Don's body was tied to his anchor and thrown overboard. We scan the channel that sources tell us Javier Martín sailed after the murder. And so this yellow tint we're seeing through here, that's the bottom.

Correct. Yeah, this line is the bottom. But after four multiple attempts, we all come to realize the water is just too deep. If a body was here, is it almost impossible to find? It makes it a lot more difficult. Not impossible, but more difficult. Not impossible, it's just more difficult at these types of debts. While Don North may be lost at sea forever, we head off to meet the one person who may know

where his body was dumped. We're just outside the worst, most notorious prison in all of Panama, Lahuita. And this is where Javier Martin lived. a wedding trial. We've been trying for months to get to this man and we'll see what he has to say. Javier Martin, now facing more than 70 years in prison and a trial date later this year, agreed to an interview with 48 hours. We're just outside the director's office. We've been told this is the place we can interview Javier Martín. But with the cameras ready to roll, The accused double murderer backs down.

He's not interested. Surprisingly, he did manage to contact producer Chris O'Connell the next day. First, by email. Javier? And then, on a phone that someone had smuggled in. It's Peter Vancant. And this is a story I know you want the world to hear. Immediately, it's clear.

Javier Martine has only one thing on his mind. He's like, I need the money. The only way I would do it is. Javier, we can't pay for an interview. He's cut in your office. He's like, I'm not going to do anything. Okay. Did you kill Don North?

Javier Martín, do you matth out there, Don North? He says, I'm not going to do an interview on the phone. Okay. In other conversations with 48 hours, Javier Martine claimed his innocence. But Don Winter is sure he got his man, and he's proud of it. I really do like the idea of being responsible for putting the bad guys in jail. I think that is a noble service.

Despite the many unanswered questions, friends and family of Don North take some solace in the knowledge that his body is most likely in the waters that he called home. Where do you think Don is today? Don's watching. He's around. He'll send his little... signal some way. It is kind of ironic also that he is in the sea. And actually when I went snorkeling a few weeks ago

in the Grand Caymans, I remember just the quiet of being underwater. And I thought about him, it's peaceful. It's definitely his resting place, and he would have told me, cremate my body, spread my ashes here in Chichime. I am at peace, though. I'm at peace that he's with the sea. That's where I would want to be.

In 2017, Javier Martin received two consecutive 26 years-to-life sentences for the murders of Don North and John Pierre Buhard.